Haunting of the Heart
by MidnightIndigo
Summary: Post-Finale Fic.  Dreams show you what you want and what you fear.  As she lingers between life and death, what does Kate Beckett want, and what is she afraid of?  Series of one-shots relating to the events in the last few minutes of the finale.
1. Chapter 1: Aftermath

**A/N: Because there aren't enough post-finale fics, and I totally have nothing better to do. Finals next week? What are you talking about? Anyways, this is not in any way unique (it's a post-finale fic, duh) but I don't think anyone's done the dream thing yet, haha. That's next chapter though. Anyways, I really hope you enjoy it and it helps you get through the summer. Because I'm basically living off of fanfiction, interviews, and reruns right now, haha.**

**Disclaimer: I still don't own Castle. **

She heard the shot and a millisecond later felt the bullet pierce her skin. The next second someone larger than her hit her and pushed her to the ground. In the confusion she didn't know whether it was a friend or foe. Either way, it didn't matter; her body was already going into shock.

Her hand was red with blood as she touched it to her uniform—or was that her vision? There had been no hurt initially, just a prick and shock, but when she hit the ground the jarring sent searing pain through her chest. She tried to gasp but couldn't, couldn't speak or cry out, just try to keep breathing. She could hear screaming and uproar, heard people yelling her name, but the sound was wrong, like she was underwater. For one moment of delirium she was ten years old again, at the pool with her dad during the summer. After all, everything was blue, wasn't it? But it was too blue. And red tinged the edges of her line of sight. What was wrong? Where was her father? Would he let her fall, sink? Why were people screaming in terror?

Someone hovered over her, so close—who was it? "Don't leave me," a voice pleaded, quiet though people screamed all around them. "Stay with me."

_I'm not leaving_, she wanted to reply, but who was she talking to and why couldn't she speak? _I want to stay with you. Can you make the pain go away? Can you save me from sinking?_

Everything else was beginning to die away in her ears, but she heard the voice again, repeating one thing. "I love you, Kate, I love you." So familiar. To whom did the voice belong? Images flashed before her blind eyes of every person she'd ever loved. Just that voice...she wanted to see him, to kiss him, but she couldn't see, couldn't move.

For just a moment her vision cleared and she saw him, watching her in terror, _Castle._ She comprehended for that moment what he had said and what he had meant and she smiled weakly, before her eyes rolled up in her head and he cradled her body gently, unable to cry.

"Kate! Katie!"

Another person broke through the police trying to keep the crowd down out of the line of any further fire and threw himself onto the ground on Kate's other side.

"Katie, oh God, Kate," he gasped, as though all the breath had left him and all the oxygen had left the world. "You can't leave me, Katie, you're all I've got."

"Help! Someone, help!" Castle yelled. "Doctor, please!" He knew he was at a funeral, in a cemetery, someone here must be a doctor, be able to save her, right? He turned quickly, scanning the chaos behind him. He caught Lanie's eye. Esposito held her down but she struggled to get to them. She pulled against him harder.

"Javier! Javier, let me go!" She broke away and crawled to them. She checked first for a pulse, then for the entry wound. "Sweetie, sweetie, hold on," she told the unconscious detective. "I need some sort of fabric."

"My jacket?" Castle asked quickly.

"It's too stiff, give me your shirt."

Without a question he yanked his pressed shirt off and handed it to her. She pressed it to the wound, blood immediately soaking it through. Had it been any other circumstances he probably would've complained, but he had any number of other shirts. He could get a new one. He only had one of her. She was irreplaceable.

"Oh my God, she's losing too much blood," he choked. His muse, his Kate, was falling apart in front of him, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was just a writer, and he couldn't help her.

"It's not as much as it looks," she snapped, but she still looked worried. "We need to get her to a hospital. I'm no surgeon. If she doesn't get help she'll-"

"Please don't say it," Castle pleaded. He pulled off Kate's bloody glove and held onto her hand, rubbing warmth back into her faintly cold skin. Jim sat opposite him, cradling her head. He looked up at Castle and they met each other's eyes.

"You promised to protect her."

"I'm sorry," Castle muttered. "I'm sorry. I should've—the gun, I saw the glinting-"

"Thank you."

Castle started. "What?"

"Katie told me you carried her out of that hangar. If it weren't for you she would've died there with Captain Montgomery. This right now was no one's fault except the shooter."

Castle's blood ran cold. "The shooter. He's going to get away!"

"No, man, we got him. He tried to run out... There are about fifty service men here. We got him in the leg, he's not going anywhere." Esposito knelt down beside him.

"No, that's not good enough!" Castle snarled. He felt fire in his chest and mind. He wanted to rip that man apart limb by limb. He wanted to put a bullet in _his_ chest. He wanted him to feel the panic and terror he'd seen in his partner's eyes. "That's not enough, he should _die_-"

He was about to get up, already on his knees, ready to get justice, but Ryan held him down. "No, Castle, she needs you here."

They heard sirens approaching and paramedics swarmed around them. Lanie and the boys backed away but Castle kept hold of her hand, and Jim remained at her head.

"You two related to her?" one of the guys asked.

"I'm her father," Jim said.

"I'm her...I'm her, um, partner," Castle mumbled.

"Work partner?" the guy asked. "You're not married?"

For one crazy moment Castle wanted to laugh. One of the other guys, fixing an oxygen mask over her mouth, glanced up at Castle and said, "No, he's the writer dude. He's that mystery writer. Richard Castle. So that makes her the muse."

"Thanks for that, Dave," the first guy snorted. Castle knew that these guys' confidence meant they were probably experienced and knew what they were doing, but it infuriated him, their calm and indifference. Reasonably, he knew that it wasn't indifference, merely objectivity, which most doctors were expert at, but the reasonable part of his mind was outweighed at the moment.

Castle was forced to let go of her hand as they lifted her onto the stretcher, but he flitted around the doctors (much to their annoyance) as they moved her. They'd cleared Jim to ride in the ambulance, but Castle had to drive himself. When they reached the vehicle the guys stopped him, but he kept watching her. Hooked up to all those wires she looked so small and weak, no color in her skin and her fingers limp. She looked so-

"She's going to make it, right?" Castle asked, craning his neck to keep sight of her as they got ready to shut the doors. "She's not going to-"

He couldn't bring himself to say it, couldn't hardly think it without wanting to puke.

"She's strong, but she was hit extremely close to the heart. Any closer and she'd already be dead, so I guess be thankful for that. I can't say anything, not yet, but we have the best cardiac surgeon in the area." He shut the doors and got in on the passenger side, and Castle stood in a cemetery parking lot watching the flashing lights disappear. Once the sirens had finally faded he turned to find his mother and daughter waiting at his car. Without a word, they got into the car, and he nodded to Ryan and Esposito, who were already pulling out to follow the ambulance back to the hospital.

**A/N: This is sort of the prologue, so stay tuned for the next chapters. I'm probably an idiot for posting this before I finish the whole story, but I'll try. My Castle deprivation, aka CMW or Castle Monday Withdrawal can probably keep me going. Don't forget to let me know what you thought! 3**


	2. Chapter 2: Far From Perfect

**A/N: First dream. I seriously enjoyed writing it, haha. Hope you enjoy reading it! To explain the story itself, it'll probably jump between dreams and what's happening in reality every chapter, depending on what I have an idea for. There's no real ending point to this story, it's basically a series of one-shots that happen to revolve around dreams and the events of the finale. So, in conclusion, I have no idea how many chapters it'll have or how long it'll go on or how long it'll take to update. At the very least I'll try to get one up once a week, but hopefully more just to get myself through the summer. I'll try to make it last for the next few months until the premiere. That's all for now! :)  
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><strong>Disclaimer: I don't own Castle.<br>**  
><em>Sirens blared in the set up facility, red flashing behind her eyes. She kept them closed, trying to block out the terror. She rubbed her arms anxiously. Soon they'd come for her, put her in the tents that had already been set up in the moments they'd been there. It had taken them moments to drive up after she'd called. Faster than an ambulance, she thought. They were like the cavalry, like an army bearing down on this place.<em>

_Scrambling footsteps. Heavy breathing from the man beside her. Her heart raced faster than it had before. She scrunched up her nose, shutting her eyes tighter. Blocking it out, ignoring the problem, wasn't working. But now she thought about it, it never had, had it? She wasn't able to avoid her mother's case, wasn't able to avoid him, was she? Wasn't able to avoid anything. She couldn't hide, all her terror was coming for her in the night, the darkness closing in and no one there to save her from drowning in it because she never let anyone in enough to know when she couldn't get out on her own. She hid it too well and she didn't know when to let go of hiding it because that's what she'd been doing for so long. It was instinctual. And no one had ever really made an effort to find out either, had they? Josh certainly hadn't; sure he knew her mom had died ten years ago, but he didn't know that she had been murdered and he certainly wasn't aware that the case had never been closed. Only one person had ever really tried to get close to her, she realized, and he was standing right next to her._

_"Detective Beckett?"_

_She opened her eyes. Maybe it was the anxiety, but her vision was blurred and shaky, as if not enough oxygen was able to reach her brain. She frowned at the unidentified group of people. They seemed to be wearing space suits or something. No, rad suits. Radiation. "Yes?"_

_Without a word they grabbed both her and her partner by the arms and basically carried them into the tents. They didn't try to go against them until they began carrying them in separate directions. She pulled towards him, jerking away from the people carrying her. She fought them hard, pushing them off her arms and probably gaining a few burns from their gloves._

_"Let me go!" she shouted, but her voice felt like she was underwater._

_They held onto her and dragged her down a white hallways, even against her fighting. Her vision was broken and wrong. They pushed her into a room with tented walls and zipped it behind her. There was no zipper on the inside; she couldn't get out. She swore and spun, examining her surroundings. A few benches, everything white for the most part. Alone. She shivered._

_"Kate."_

_She turned again, startled by the familiar voice. "Josh, what are you doing here? Why—how did you get in? I thought you were going to Haiti-"_

_"I'm here for you," he said, smiling earnestly. "I always will be."_

_She stood stock still as he stepped forward and hugged her. It felt good in his arms, but she was stiff as a board. Something was wrong. She felt him, but he wasn't warm. He wasn't anything._

_"He's lying, Kate."_

_She twisted. "Castle?"_

_"What are you doing here?" Josh asked. Not angry, merely confused._

_Castle ignored him, his expression hard. "He's lying," he repeated, taking a step towards them from the opposite side._

_"Castle, what are you-"_

_"How could you choose him over me? He's not there for you, he's never there, he's always...gone." He advanced another few feet. "I'm always here for you. _Always_."_

_"What about last summer?" Josh snapped, his typical even-tempered persona dropping._

_"How did you know about-" Kate began, but was cut off once again._

_"You told me," he said. "You told me your partner had left in May, wasn't coming back until fall. You said you were all alone. Remember being alone?"_

_Kate remembered, but she'd never told Josh. She had mentioned Castle to him a few times when he'd come up in a story or something, but never anything about him leaving._

_"You had Tom," Castle countered, speaking now to her, the look on his face softening as he looked at her. "I thought you didn't care."_

_Her heart in her chest ached, listening to him. But Josh kept his hand on her shoulders. "She doesn't care about you, buddy. She loves _me_." He turned her head and tilted her head up with his thumb, then kissed her slowly, stretching it out as long as possible, knowing Castle was watching and was ready to hit him as he did it. "Isn't that right, baby?" he asked, forcing her to look into his eyes. They were black all the way through, the whites and irises gone. Just dark, unfeeling eyes. She looked over her shoulder fearfully. Castle's eyes were bright blue, shining and too bright, like the blue was on fire like the ocean at sunset. She couldn't look at either of them, so she leaned into Josh and once again shut her eyes tight._

_"Tell me you'll always be there for me," she whispered. "That you'll never leave me. Promise."_

_"Of course, sweetheart. I promise. But I have to go now. I'll be back sometime." He let go and glided back, fading to nothing. She reached out to grab him but her hand went through the tent walls. She reached out to grab him but her hand went through the last transparent vision of him. Her arm dropped to her side limply. _

_She felt hands once again on her shoulders, warm hands, so alive she could feel the blood rushing through the veins, hear the pulse roaring in her ears with just a small touch. So close to her ear, Castle spoke, and she shivered. "He's not there, Kate. He's never there. When he's not there, who do you turn to? Who's waiting every time? I've been here, Kate. I've always been here. I always will be. Always. I know you, I know all your secrets and I know how you feel. He doesn't know anything about you. Why do you keep running? You refuse me at every turn, when you know you'll only ever be happy with _me_. Don't you want to be happy? Because you deserve it. Stop being so blind. I'm right here." She was visibly shaking now, though Castle had stepped even closer and she felt him warm chest and his heartbeat and his pulse sounding through his body. She tried hard not to let him feel her own heart speed up but she knew that somehow he did as he pressed his lips to her neck and her hair. He barely touched her skin, and the light brush was enough to cause her to shudder. Under his kisses she forgot his pretense for moments and turned her head slightly. He caught her lips and she lost any control she'd had over the situation. She spun and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him harder, shutting her eyes again. And they were out on that street again, where they'd first kissed all those months ago. It was like reliving that moment, only it was daytime and the sun was shining like summer and they weren't undercover and the guard was just a doorman. Nothing to worry about, everything was perfect. But then it wasn't._

_She opened her eyes for a moment, just a flutter, and he was gone and she was once again alone in an empty white tent. Far from perfect._

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to tell me what you thought! :)**


	3. Chapter 3: Family

**A/N: Sorry guys, this took a while to type up even though it's short. I'm not entirely happy with this chapter because it's so short, but it's supposed to be sort of quick with the characters in the dark.  
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**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle.**

Castle drove as quickly as he could through the city traffic, trying not to let the image of her falling, of all the blood, of her closing her eyes for possibly the last time. "Oh, God," he swallowed, startling his daughter, who sat anxiously in the backseat. Martha, beside him, was not caught off-guard. She laid a hand on his arm to calm him so they wouldn't crash and create an even bigger problem.

"What, Dad?" Alexis asked.

"She closed her eyes-what if I never see her eyes again, what if-" Martha squeezed his wrist, cutting him off gently.

"Sweetheart, she's going to be perfectly fine, and your worrying and reckless driving is going to get us killed, which is not going to help her in the slightest.

He took a deep breath. "Mother, she got shot! Someone targeted her at that funeral, and we still have no way to find out who! Every time, it's a hired hitman, and they always have leverage over us!"

"Richard!" Martha snapped. "You're not helping anything thinking about this right now! Think about her. Think about her being healthy and happy. Think about her laughing. Think about how strong she is, how nothing fazes her."

His breathing was shallow but beginning to even out. "Okay, here, I'll drop you guys off at home-"

"No way!" Alexis countered instantly.

"Not a chance, kiddo," Martha added.

He glanced at both of them, their serious faces, and decided not to argue.

"We love Kate almost as much as you do," Martha informed him.

He smiled weakly at her. "Thank you, Mother."

"Because I know you always hated Mom," Alexis added quietly.

"I do not _hate_ her. I disagree with her. Your father was an idiot to marry her."

"Not the time," Castle snapped, pulling into the hospital valet area. Ryan and Esposito were in Ryan's car in front of them. Castle supposed Lanie and Jenny had taken Esposito's.

He got out of the car and handed the key to the parking attendant, rushing into the waiting room without waiting for his family. "Katherine Beckett?" he asked the receptionist.

"She's in surgery right now. Would you like to wait? I don't know how long it'll be."

"Where's her dad?"

"Last I heard he was pacing outside of the operating room."

"Is he allowed to do that?"

"I don't know if he's allowed, per-say, but under the circumstances, given the nature of the injury, no one's stopping him." She noticed the look in his eyes, the way he kept glancing down the hallway behind her. "What's your relationship to Ms. Beckett?"

"I'm her partner. We work together. I..." his voice cracked and he continued in a whisper, feeling like a character in a Jane Austen novel, "I love her."

She hesitated for a moment, before standing to lift up the divide to let him through. "Straight through there."

"Thank you." He looked back at his family. Martha nodded for him to go in. They've might've been related by blood, but the detectives at the Twelfth were just as much a part of his family, Kate the most. He'd already lost one member of his family. How could he stand to lose another? Especially without knowing if she'd even heard him.

He strode briskly down the corridor, the walk seeming like a lifetime. He wanted to break down right then and there when he rounded a bend to see Jim Beckett slumped against the wall. Bent slightly, head bowed, face hidden by his hands, he looked defeated.

"Jim," Castle called. "Have you heard anything yet?"

"No, sorry, Rick," he replied. He rested his hands on his knees and he shook his head, still staring at his nice shoes. "God, I thought it was over when Katie told me Lockwood was dead."

"It's not," Rick agreed. "And from now on it won't be, unless we get the person behind it all."

"She's not going after this person," Jim snapped, more mad at the world then at Rick. "She already got shot, and who knows if she's going to make it home. You keep her off this case, Rick. Please."

"Even I don't know if I can do that," Rick admitted. "I tried and she said we were over."

"Trust me, Rick, she doesn't mean that. Before you showed up she did nothing but work, and she went back to that last summer." Rick opened his mouth to apologize, but Jim cut him off. "It wasn't your fault. You didn't know she broke up with Tom for you."

Rick started. "What?"

"You didn't know that?" Jim asked, looking up. "She never told you, did she? She broke up with him the day you left, but then your publisher showed up-"

"Oh, God," Rick moaned. "And I just left-"

"It's not your fault," Jim repeated. "You didn't know."

"But if she never wakes up-"

"She's going to wake up," Jim insisted. "And you're going to set this straight."

**A/N: Hopefully I can have a chapter up soon. If you're waiting for an Evanescence Files update, it might be a few more days, the next chapter is taking a while; all the ideas are sort of mushed together in my brain, on top of every other writing related thing I have to do, since I don't just write fanfiction. But hopefully it'll be up soon.**

**Thanks for reading, don't forget to tell me what you thought! :)**


	4. Chapter 4: Dancing with the Devil

**A/N: Sort of a short chapter, but I couldn't add to it. I guess it's not too short. I do like it though, I liked writing it because it's kind of dark and different. I kept flipping out as I was typing it in the car though, haha, I'm fairly certain my dad thinks I'm crazy. (But then again, people generally do, so it's all good.)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle.**

**EDIT: This is a dream, in case it was hard to tell, sorry I forgot the italics. Fixed now! :)  
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_"Katie," she heard someone whisper from across the room._

_She looked up from having her face buried in her knees. The people outside had shown no sign of letting her out of this tent all alone, and so she had sunk to the floor to sob with her knees pulled up to her chest. Any other voice and she would've wiped her eyes and tried to regain her composure first, but her head shot up as she looked at the source of the sound. "Mom?"_

_She stood and ran to her mother, throwing her arms around her and feeling around six again, as she had with her dad. What had been happening at the time when she'd been little and ice-skating? She pushed the thought away. It didn't matter, not really. Her mother was there, the person who had fought away all her nightmares when she was young and became part of her nightmares when she was older, having haunted her dreams for years. So which was she now? The protector or the source? Kate backed away slightly and examined her mom. Johanna Beckett smiled at her. "You're okay, Katie. You're okay."_

_Kate let her mother bury her in her arms, like she'd needed for twelve years. Twelve years since her mother had hugged her. The tears came even harder now. "Mom, what's going on? They won't tell me anything, I've been all alone-"_

_Johanna shook her head, smiling sadly. "You're not alone, sweetheart, you're never alone. You've always got someone to stand with you. You're lucky. Now, I need you to fight, you have to fight-"_

_"Fight what?" she asked. Her mother's voice had turned frightened and it scared her. If her mother was scared then she should be too. It was no secret that Kate Beckett was fearless, but that courage stemmed from Johanna. The words seemed so familiar to Kate, as if she'd heard them...as if she'd said them._

_"Fight, Katie, fight," Johanna said sadly, looking down at her daughter's torso. Kate followed her gaze just as a searing pain shot along her ribs, and seeing the red blossoming on her shirt, she started to breath faster as though she could not get enough air and then not at all, and then she collapsed once again. Her mother watched her fall, not able to do anything to help. The last thing she saw before the blackness was Johanna's despair as she fell away from her, never able to stay with her. But did her mother want her to?_

_The black shot forward as though she were moving through space, and colors appeared in lights, which came down in flowing sun rays and flashing lights painting a picture around her, the colors dripping down around her, as if someone was dripping paint down the side of a glass cylinder that surrounded her, that she was trapped in. Like the colors created the world from some divine hand outside of this cage that surrounded her on all sides that she couldn't see but knew was there. And he stood in front of her, smiling, and she looked up at him in confusion. "What's going on?" she asked._

_"You don't get it," he chuckled, but his face soon became serious. "Typical Kate. Always too blind to see what's right there. And now it's too late."_

_"Too late?" She spun, trying to figure out what was happening. The police car held Harrison Tisdale, the red and blue lights flashing. The day she'd walked away from him for the first time. She looked back at Castle, who had lost all semblance of humor on his face. "Always, Kate. Didn't I promise always? If you don't come back there is no always. And all because you were too late, too late to say it-"_

_"Say what?" she asked desperately, but he put a fingers to his lips and turned to walk away despairingly. No, that wasn't right, she walked away first, and he watched her leave, not the other way around. She tried to lunge after him but hands caught her, holding her back from following and calling after him what was the matter with him, and she struggled; she glanced behind her to see Hal Lockwood, his face completely expressionless, as though he was merely a shade of what he had been alive, pulling her away, holding onto her arms. She screamed against him as the scene changed, just the two of them moving through space and time to land in the hangar. Roy was on the ground, she was watching herself kneel over his body, heard her own sobs, and Lockwood's body lay beside them both. But he kept pulling her farther as Castle ran inside to comfort her; she watched herself lean into his chest and cry. Her movements seemed slow, like she and her captor moved through molasses while the rest of the world sped up, spinning faster. She screamed and fought but his hands were like lead, and he managed to spin her around, away from the scene, and he held one of her hands in an iron grip, while the other circled her waist, and suddenly he made her dance, spinning and waltzing around the hangar, so full of death, and the other souls appeared above their bodies, lying on the cold floor. They moved closer together, watching, closing a circle around her and her evil dance partner. He spun her out and let go, and she switched hands, dancing with another killer as the first shrunk back into the circle. Within a minute she was passed around to each person standing there, while still on the outside, oblivious, she and the only dance partner she wanted sat over their Captain's body. She spun back to Lockwood, who stopped the dance abruptly and leaned down to kiss her, missing her lips when she struggled and meeting her jaw. He caught her chin and smirked as she attempted to pull away. "Come on, Detective, that's not very kind of you." And he kissed her again, and she had no control but to kiss him back, as though he controlled her, controlled her mind. Once again this seemed so familiar, and when she closed her eyes she could pretend she was kissing another man. After quite a bit she realized what she was doing and her eyes opened; she screamed against his mouth and pushed away suddenly, stumbling to the floor at their feet, and then Dick Coonan approached, holding his knife, and as he descended, crouching beside her, no emotion flitting over his face as Lockwood had remained so devoid of emotion, she scrambled backwards, screaming more, until her screams subsided to choked sobs. He laced the edge of the blade around her jaw gently, not enough to break the skin. Her breathing was shallow as she tried to shrink back further but found her way blocked by Lockwood's faceless men. Coonan smiled and slid his knife slowly through her skin, and she found the breath to scream again as pain shot through her stomach, blocking every other thought and blinding her to the world._

**A/N: Hope it was good! I don't know if liked is quite the word for it, but if you did then let me know! **

**Indy**


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